Smoke from the wildfires stinging your eyes.
34C heat, one of the hottest days of the summer.
A bee sting mid-stride in the first 20 minutes of the race.
Screaming in pain as the calf seized up, asking a fellow competitor to stretch your leg, and then scrambling backwards down the mountain because it’s the only way to work through the pain to get to the end of that leg of the race. And then continuing to race another 20km.
Running out of water 3/4 of the way through the second leg and having to ask a fellow competitor for some water.
Those are some of the stories of myself and my fellow competitors during the Canadian Death Race. It demonstrates what trail runners, especially out in the middle of nowhere, will do for each other.
The Canadian Death Race, a 125km running race up 3 mountains with 17,000 feet of elevation change had been in my sights for 13 years, and on July 31, 2021 it became a reality.
The start line was surreal. There were so many strong athletes, it seemed somewhat intimidating. Do I belong here? Am I ready? Where I live we don’t have any mountains, and even big hills by these standards are impossible to come by. So there was a lot of doubt swirling in my head. Then there were the wildfires causing smoke so thick that we could no longer see the mountains that were clearly visible when we’d arrived in Grande Cache, Alberta only 2 days prior to the race. The air quality index had gone from good to poor in that time, with the index the highest I had seen it since I had started watching it 1 month earlier.
And finally the heat. The original forecast for race day was a high of 21C, which was perfect for a race. Then it started climbing, and the morning of the race the forecast was for 34C. Fortunately the forests provided some shield from the blazing sun, but the heat at the top of the mountains and in the clear-cut sections of the course were almost unbearable.
Despite these doubts racing through my mind, I was able to put them aside and really enjoy the first leg. Being alongside so many runners (there were 600 total), there was an opportunity to talk with fellow runners, laugh, and enjoy our surroundings. The spectators along the way, who were mainly from the small town of Grande Cache, have been coming out to cheer on the Death Racers for 21 years. Their enthusiasm was sincere and it inspired me.
I made it through the first leg with ease, finishing so early that my father, who was the crew for my race, was caught off guard and wasn’t ready. It was the second leg that forced me into what racers call the pain cave. There were 2 mountains that were 6,500ft of total elevation gain, more than I had ever experienced in any of my training runs. This was combined with thick mud caused my knee to start feeling pain shortly into the second leg. By the time I was going up the first mountain, the pain started to mount. By the second mountain any downhill segments were sheer pain and I couldn’t run down anymore. This unfortunately caused me to not be able to run any of the race from the second mountain on. While I made the time cutoff of the second leg, I knew I wouldn’t be fast enough to make it to the checkpoint at the end of the third leg, and I made the tough decision to drop out of the race.
There were so many obstacles to overcome along the way to the start line of the race – having to lose over 100lbs, becoming a runner (again), severe asthma, pneumonia, sleep apnea, countless injuries (especially those cursed twisted ankles), bears, chipmunks that sounded like bears (hey, they make a lot of noise!). But in the end it was one thing that made it a reality: consistency.
No matter what happened, no matter the setbacks, I was there day in and day out to do my training. It wasn’t always easy, and it certainly wasn’t always as consistent as it could have been. It doesn’t actually take 13 years to lose 110lbs and train for a 125km race, but it does if you’re not as consistent as you need to be.
But all of that doesn’t matter now. Because I was able to toe the starting line amongst some incredibly inspiring athletes and call myself a Death Racer. Next year I’m going back to finish what I started.
Recent Comments